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Originally Posted by PDC  I am not addressing the walls. I am addressing the corners, which become horns, focusing their reflections in a beam. That would be my concern. |
Well, you makes your choices and you takes your chances. A square corner has the property that if you beam directly into one wall at 45 degrees, it reflects to the adjacent wall and beams right back to you. Any angle less than or equal to 90 degrees has such a property. Many studios try to avoid this problem by using 5 or 6 walls (or more). With 120 degree angles, you will see that if you line up to talk down the axis, the first 60 degree reflection will cast the sound parallel to the adjacent wall, hitting the third wall straight-on. This will then reflect back to the original reflection point and back to you. Now, if the surfaces are diffusive, you get 1 diffusion if you talk straight into a flat wall, you get two diffusions if you talk into a 90 degree or less angle, and you get 3 or more diffusions if you have more than 90 degree angles.
If you build your walls smooth enough that they don't diffuse sound, you can get the effect they prize so highly in mosques, where a whisper on one side of the dome can be clearly heard at the opposite side as it creeps along the nearly infinite number of nearly 180 degree angles. But we're building in lots of diffusion, so three diffusions per observable echo should yield pretty nicely spread out sound. At least much better than 90 degree corners, no?